The Lion Tamer Who Lost

by Louise Beech

  ‘She’s given up,’ says Stig.

  ‘She might not have,’ says Ben. ‘She might have a plan.’

  ‘I agree. She may try again later. But…’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Well,’ says Stig. ‘If she hasn’t attached to the other girls within a few hours, it might never happen.’

  ‘Maybe she’s planning her next move.’ Ben is angry at Stig. ‘You ever think that what you’re doing here is just interfering with nature?’

  ‘Ben.’ Esther softly shakes her head.

  ‘It’s true,’ he insists. ‘I read before I came here that some of these sanctuaries mean well but really do more harm than good.’

  ‘You’re right,’ says Stig. ‘Some do a lot of harm.’

  ‘But not us,’ Ben says.

  ‘This is why we don’t permit cub-petting by holidaymakers.’ Stig sounds sad rather than angry. ‘It’s why we try to interfere as little as is possible with the lions before we set them free. Let them interact with one another alone. As we should maybe do now.’ Stig looks at Ben. ‘Watching Lucy won’t help her. Go and find something else to do and let nature take its course.’

  ‘Nature. That’s a joke.’ Ben shakes his head.

  ‘Come back later and check their progress.’ Stig heads off towards the huts.

  Esther watches him and then turns to Ben. ‘That was harsh.’

  ‘So? Don’t you ever think this is fucking wrong?’

  Esther looks thoughtful. ‘But the lions will die out without our help.’

  ‘Which was our fault in the first place.’

  ‘Yes.’ Esther pauses. ‘I know it’s tough to hear, but Stig does know what he’s talking about.’

  ‘He does my fucking head in sometimes,’ says Ben.

  ‘Maybe we should leave them now – come back later. We might be hindering rather than helping by being here.’

  Ben knows Esther speaks sense.

  ‘Want to get coffee?’ she suggests.

  ‘Yeah. I could use that cup of mud.’

  They get their drinks and take them to the rotten log overlooking the open land. For a while, they are silent. It is such a comfortable peace. Ben is aware of how rare it is to find anyone you can sit with so quietly and not feel you must fill the space with words.

  Should he tell Esther he is gay?

  The thought seems to have crept into his head without him noticing it. She would be the first person he has told. The only one who would know, aside from Andrew. This could be the perfect moment. It’s not like anyone here will judge him. There are two gay couples – John and Paul, and Helen and Brigitte – at the project. But he can’t say the words. Everything that has happened tells him that it will only bring him unhappiness. That he should turn his back on it. He hid it his entire life back home. Men have hidden it for years, so they could get married and have kids, to avoid being ostracised, to conform. It can’t be that hard, can it?

  Ben realises Esther is talking.

  ‘Lucy will be fine,’ she is saying. ‘Far fewer male cubs survive into adulthood. Lionesses are tougher.’ She grins. ‘Just like the human female.’

  Ben knows this is true. All lions face high mortality as cubs – for a variety of reasons, including injuries, lack of food, and being killed by adult lions – but when males reach sexual maturity, around age two, the older males within the pride kick them out. Lionesses typically stay behind.

  ‘Isn’t it cruel in the wild?’ he says. ‘The males get kicked out by their family for no reason. Imagine that? Must be so confusing. Being cast out into a world where he must make it alone or die.’

  ‘Happens in the human world too,’ says Esther.

  ‘True.’

  Ben is suddenly angry that, despite everything, despite what they had shared, Andrew would not speak to him before he left. Would not give him a chance. Give them a chance. That he simply cast him out. Ignored him when it all went wrong. And after all Ben did for him.

  ‘I suppose at least in the human world we have our mates,’ says Esther.

  ‘Yeah. And alcohol.’

  ‘Poor lions. No wine for them after a shit day, eh?’

  ‘Sorry for being a grumpy bastard,’ Ben says softly. ‘I shouldn’t take it out on you.’

  Esther smiles, says, ‘What else are friends for?’

  Ben looks at her. The sun blesses her hair with gold. She has a good heart that shines in her face. He is still pissed off with Stig and his preaching. Sick of his endless voice. He wonders if he is just angry in general. Angry at life. Angry at Andrew. But none of it was really Andrew’s fault. The blame for everything going wrong lies firmly at his dad’s door.

  He pictures that door. The kitchen. The sink.

  And against his will, sitting on the log with Esther, he is there again.

  9

  ENGLAND

  The Nine Lives of a Cat

  Change is noisy and clanky; it squeals and smashes and scrapes. It rolls cars on ice like metal snowballs. It woke Ben.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  When Ben had been home from university for a few days he tried to remove the black ink from his jeans with vinegar. His dad, Will, came into the kitchen where he was scrubbing them over the sink, and announced that he’d got him a girlfriend. Ben’s first thought was that girlfriend was an inappropriate term for a sixty-three-year-old man to use. But then the girls he dated were usually half his age.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ben had to ask.

  That summer Will was drinking a glass of whisky before nine am, followed by a few beers in the pub with Brian before the betting shop, and cheap vodka at night before passing out to the Question Time credits.

  ‘Well, Dad?’ said Ben, when Will made no rush to explain.

  The kitchen had not been updated since Ben’s mother Heidi had barley twist units installed in 1987, with a leaded display cabinet that housed dust-coated mugs and forgotten family snaps. She died nine years after the remodel, when Ben was eleven.

  Will rummaged in the cupboards for food. The sweet smell of cut grass lingered by the back door.

  ‘Dad?’ repeated Ben.

  ‘Someone’s got to sort you out.’ Will heated fat in the frying pan and cracked some eggs into it. ‘I thought you’d be home from uni to regale me with tales of debauchery, wild parties, protest marches and loose women.’

  ‘I can’t manage all that and get a degree.’

  ‘Why not, lad?’

  The fat spat like an unappreciative audience.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve sorted you out,’ said Will.

  ‘I can sort myself out.’

  Ben scrunched his jeans into an angry, soggy ball and put them in the bin. The stain, as black as a bad score on a maths test, remained. It just reminded him that Andrew hadn’t called. Seeing him in the station last week had only reminded him how somehow right he had felt when near him. Being home and sleeping in a bedroom that time and taste forgot, Ben felt like he was being squashed. Squashed and suffocated.

  ‘I told Jodie you’d take her out,’ said Will.

  ‘Who the hell’s Jodie?’

  ‘Jodie Cartwright. Dan-next-door’s granddaughter. You used to play kiss chase with her in their garden, you great lop.’

  Will flipped the egg; smoke filled the room. He rolled his shirtsleeves up, found a cigarette in the drawer, and lit it at the gas, inhaling hard. Nicotine had stained his greying hair and yellowed his fingernails, yet Will managed to remain somehow distinguished, with thick hair waving over his ears, eyes still rich with life, and a firm jaw.

  ‘Jodie Cartwright?’ Ben saw her momentarily, a ten-year-old skipping.

  ‘Looks like butter wouldn’t melt but I knew a girl like that once – Aileen.’ Will grinned and Ben ignored him by pretending to look for something in the freezer. ‘Looked like an angel but, oh, she could f––’

  ‘She’s not my type.’

  ‘A woman doesn’t have to be your type to be fun, lad.’

/>   Ben slammed the freezer door shut.

  ‘When did you last have sex?’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m not talking to you about this.’

  ‘If you can’t talk about it, no wonder you’re getting nowt. You sure you’re not a bloody shirt-lifter?’ Will sat down at the kitchen table and savaged his sandwich.

  Someone a few gardens along began mowing the grass and singing ‘Come Fly with Me’ with gusto.

  ‘If I was,’ said Ben, ‘do you think I’d be able to tell a homophobe like you?’

  Will laughed. ‘Mike’s got a woman and he’s not even in the bloody country.’

  Ben’s older brother was on the frontline in Afghanistan, leaving behind his almost-eight-months-pregnant fiancée, Kimberley. He might not be back for the birth; war didn’t permit such sentimentalities. Kimberley visited Will regularly, bringing him shortbread and sharing prenatal scan pictures. Ben had often seen them sitting close together on the sofa – too close; touching. It made him twitch and turn away.

  ‘You having an egg butty?’ asked Will.

  ‘You know I hate eggs.’

  Ben went into the living room. Pictures lined the fading walls; portraits of Mike in combats, poised for attack, and snaps with his army buddies. It annoyed Ben that his dad displayed these more prominently than pictures of his mum. Only behind the I Love Golf mug did she smile inside a rusting frame. Ben could still hear her soft accent, her silly words; and recall how his dad had mocked them.

  Don’t knock my statubes over, Will.

  ‘It’s statue, woman.’

  What’s a homosectional, Will?

  ‘For God’s sake, it’s homosexual, a puff, woman, a bloody puff!’

  They said it’s olvarian cancer, Will, and it’s advanced. How can we tell the kids?

  ‘Ovarian cancer, Heidi. You want the kids to be a laughing stock when they tell their mates their mam has olvarian cancer?’

  Will dropped his plate in the sink. ‘Mike can keep a girl.’

  ‘She’s pregnant,’ called Ben.

  ‘How do you think I finally got your mother down the aisle?’

  Ben’s mum had been one of a huge sprawling Catholic family in Belfast. She met Will at a party at Hull University. He had, so his story went at every funeral and wedding, slapped the backside of ‘this shy, funny-voiced thing’, and because her brothers always told her to fight back, she’d smacked him in the face. Will had said, ‘I’m going to marry you!’ He never tired of this tale.

  They married when she got pregnant a year into university.

  He appeared in the doorway now. ‘You think your mother’d want you to be alone, lad?’

  ‘She’d want me to find the right person,’ said Ben.

  ‘Yeah, but you gotta go through a few wrong ’uns to get there.’ Will laughed. ‘You think your mother was my first love? I was thirty-five for God’s sake – I’d slept with half of East Yorkshire by then. Your mother made me pure again … for so long anyhow.’ He fiddled with his cuff. ‘You’d best get ready, lad.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Jodie said she’d come at twelve.’

  ‘What?’

  There was a gentle knock on the front door.

  Will grinned. ‘That’ll be her.’

  ‘Tell her I’m out.’ Ben moved to the kitchen door.

  ‘She can see you, you big lunk.’

  At the window, a nose pressed between the dirty net curtains. Jodie had exactly the kind of pixie-like face his mate Brandon liked. Ben remembered her at thirteen, sunbathing in the garden, him knowing even then that the female form did not make him pant at the mouth the way it did his friends.

  She came into the living room as though she was walking on a springy mattress. Will looked so intently at her that Ben ushered her out of the house.

  Outside she said, ‘You’ve not changed much, Ben.’

  Not sure if it was an insult, he said, ‘You haven’t either.’

  ‘You like my hair?’ She touched the sun-kissed strands. ‘Let’s go for a drive.’

  Ben got into the car next to her. He watched her move the gear stick and wished her skin was pale instead of fake-tan orange, that it was covered in bristly hair. The Piglet air freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror irritated him.

  ‘I was surprised when your dad said you’d been asking about me.’

  ‘He said that?’ Ben couldn’t hide his surprise.

  ‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ smiled Jodie.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Let’s go to the park.’ Jodie wriggled in her seat, exposing tan thigh.

  Jodie glanced at him and then her thigh and smiled. ‘You like it?’

  ‘Yes. No.’ Ben looked at the road. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘You don’t have to be nervous,’ said Jodie.

  ‘I’m not.’

  She stopped to let children cross the road. A man in the street bent down to retrieve onions escaping from a torn carrier bag, gold hair covering his face for a moment; Andrew. Ben’s chest felt tight, like new jeans. Then the man looked up, and he was no one.

  ‘Do you like ice-cream?’ asked Jodie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We can get some at East Park.’

  Jodie continued chatting in the same way until they parked near an expanse of grass where kids played football and dogs chased sticks.

  ‘I’m not in the mood for the park,’ said Ben.

  ‘Oh.’ Jodie had opened the boot and was pulling out a checked blanket.

  ‘Let’s get a beer on Holderness Road.’

  ‘I’m driving.’

  ‘Coke then.’ Like she needed more sugar.

  They joined the main street. Ben tried to walk out of sync with Jodie’s clickety-clackety heels but couldn’t; when she asked what he was doing, stopping and starting, he gave in to her pattern.

  ‘I wouldn’t think you’d drink during the day.’ Jodie took his hand in hers.

  ‘Why not?’ Ben looked at his imprisoned fingers.

  ‘Your dad’s a bit of a boozer.’

  A monumental smash interrupted them, a sound Ben would not forget for a long time. It was punctuated with glassy tinkles and car horns and squealing breaks. Jodie spun around, and Ben gratefully reclaimed his fingers.

  A red lorry advertising champagne across its trailer had backed out of the avenue opposite the park, shoving the words Champers Hits the Spot! into the now-concertinaed bonnet of a car. Ben would later read that the mother (Ellen Lloyd, thirty-five) had been turning to tend her son (Jon Lloyd, seven) when the father (Grant Lloyd, thirty-seven) must have taken his eyes off the road too.

  ‘Oh goodness,’ said Jodie. ‘We were just there!’

  Ben walked towards the wreckage. The car’s bonnet was as crumpled as used baking foil. The rear doors hung open, scattering glass and magazines and a black shoe onto the kerb. Furry dice hung from the rear-view mirror. Ben couldn’t take his eyes from the four and six, knowing if he did he would see the two bloody heads shoved against the dashboard.

  The driver involved had deserted his truck and was looking at the solitary black shoe; he moaned into his hands and backed away.

  ‘Get him a drink,’ said someone, and another someone went into a pub.

  At first all the someones had remained distant, viewing from doorways and hastily parked cars. Now they closed in; elbowing for the best position. The flow carried Ben. Jodie held his arm, said it was too icky. But he was pulled closer. Through the yawning gap left by an absent door, Ben saw a small boy still strapped to his seat. The chairs in front had crushed up against his legs. The boy blinked over and over.

  ‘Has anyone called 999?’ asked someone.

  Ben reached the front of the crowd. A woman knelt at the car, her heels sticking out like two blades. The boy inside said, ‘Pete, Pete!’

  The woman looked at Ben. ‘He wants you.’

  ‘I’m not Pete.’

  ‘He thinks you are.’ The w
oman stood. ‘Talk to him, just until they come.’

  Glass crunched under Ben’s feet as he approached the vehicle. He crouched by the boy. His eyes shone with shock; his skin was waxen with hurt and the back of his hair stuck up.

  ‘You’re not Pete,’ he said sadly.

  ‘Who’s Pete?’

  ‘My brother.’ The child’s b came out like a bubble. ‘He’s on holiday … I thought he’d come … he’s tall … has funny hair like you.’ Sirens sounded from afar. ‘My legs hurt.’

  Ben looked only at the child’s face. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Jon … Why won’t Mum talk to me?’

  Ben remembered when his mum couldn’t speak any more, when all her mis-words died, when they let her come home from the hospital and settled her on a put-you-up bed next to the Christmas tree in the middle room and let her watch reruns of Lucky Ladders as many times as she wanted. Three weeks after she passed away Ben found a note from her in his Cats, Lions and Tigers book.

  Inside it said: Ben, I love you and you must be there for your dad and your brother and for you. You are the only one that really evaluated me. Look after your brother. Do whatever makes your dad happy. But most of all what makes you happy.

  ‘I’ve asked Mum for my Doctor Who book,’ said Jon.

  Ben followed his gaze to the floor where the book faced downwards.

  The crowd disassembled, sirens blasted.

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘Make room for the paramedics.’ A police officer touched Ben’s shoulder. ‘Come on, let them do their job.’

  Ben moved away. When he looked back, a paramedic was putting a blanket over Jon.

  Jodie appeared. ‘You’ve got blood on your T-shirt.’ She dragged him to a wall near the park gates, made him sit. ‘You look terrible.’

  What do you expect? Ben wanted to say. I’ve just seen a child probably orphaned.

  ‘Don’t know why people are still hanging around like vultures.’ She exhaled. ‘Do you want to come back to mine?’

  Ben shook his head vigorously.

  ‘Your top will stain if we don’t clean it – let’s find a café.’

  He let himself be dragged again; let himself mimic Jodie’s clickety-clacks. She took him to nearby café and marched to the counter, where a variety of stodgy cakes sat in a cooler. Ben pulled his bloody T-shirt away from his skin. More clothes ruined. The counter assistant appeared from the back, drying her hands on an apron and staring at the blood.